Grammar Lesson Ideas for Homeschoolers

I homeschooled my son for several months while we were going through a transition moving from Salt Lake City to upstate New York. I saw that time as an opportunity to focus on some academic areas in which I felt he never received much instruction.

Although the charter schools he had attended had insanely kid-friendly classes and really tremendous learning opportunities, a lot of the basics were left out. There was no memorizing multiplication tables, no diagramming of sentences. My agenda was to finally get those basics down.

Because I was only going to be homeschooling for a short period of time, and I felt I had my work cut out for me as far as curriculum, I didn't get any fancy-schmancy, expensive guides, planners, or programs. I found some age and grade appropriate textbooks at the thriftstore to use as aids, and I was set.

The English book I purchased had some sentence examples, in which the subject, verbs, nouns, and basic parts of speech were to be marked. There were other similar exercises in identifying the sentence elements. After we used the examples, I decided to write and print out a few of my own sentences for my son to analyze in the same manner.

Wait a minute, I thought-why not use some of his old books that I had in a stack ready to give away? I flipped through a few; the sentences and words in the picture books seemed a bit too simple and few, and the novels and chapter books a bit too wordy and physically compressed to make marking easy and legible.

Luckily, I found some perfect books to serve as grammar lessons. Random House published a series called Disney's Wonderful World of Reading. They were issued as childrens' book club books, and were very popular in the 1970s. As a matter of fact, they're still popular-Scholastic is now publishing new Disney book club books. But, the older ones are thrift store childrens' book staples-often even entire collections are found.

The Disney books have appropriate sentences for grammar-not too complex, yet not ridiculously simple. They also have a nice font size and general spacing on the page, which allows for neat, easy marking. Familiar stories and pictures are also kind of nice-it seems less scholastic and intimidating to kids who might find grammar boring.

Choosing books

These Disney books worked well for us, but there are tons of children's books that will certainly work just as well. If you don't have any old books you want to use, as I stated before, they are found in great abundance in any thrift store. Nicely, children's books are often priced even cheaper than the "regular" books-at our local thrift store, the kids' books are only a quarter a piece.

So, when deciding on appropriate books, just keep in mind to take a look at the sentence structures, and space between lines (for making appropriate markings.)

Grammar lesson techniques and ideas

It's easy to develop your own methods, but I'll share my own experience to give you some ideas. First, I had my son read the story. If you're using a long chapter book or novel, reading chapters or even just a page at a time may be in order. Putting the grammar exercises in context and applying them to a familiar setting and story will help your child understand grammar isn't an abstraction.

After he read the story, I made a key at the beginning of each section my son was working on. Although study sections (using the same directions and key) may be larger, I had him analyze one page at a time as one complete exercise. For example, I wrote, "Underline the nouns. Put a "PN" over proper nouns. Circle the verbs. Put an "A" over adjectives."

Another idea is to use highlighters. When working on sentence structure, I wrote, "Highlight the subject with yellow. Mark the object pink." The nice thing about using highlighters is that they can be combined with the pencil marks, so there's a visual representation that shows how certain words can serve more than one purpose in a sentence-for example, that the subject is also a noun.

If you are going to combine lessons like this in the same sentences, do it one step at a time, and wait to write a second key until your child is finished with the first exercises, and any corrections are made. Make any of your own corrections using a pen, or colored pencil, fine point colored marker, or different implement than your child's.

There are usually a couple blank pages at the back of some types of books. You can have your child write out a short definition of each part of speech they'll be working on, for reference. Or, have them use the space to create their own sentences, based on characters and situations in the book. For example, "Write a ten word sentence using 2 nouns, 1 verb, and 1 adjective."

Another idea is to also use the text to find spelling words. Even some picture books have more challenging words that are appropriate for spelling lists. Creating as many lessons as possible out of a single book keeps everything in context for your child.

One thing to keep in mind, especially if your child is younger or less mature, is to make sure he or she understands and respects that this book is serving as a textbook, and is "set apart" as special. They should be kept with school books and supplies, not in the regular bookcase or shelf.

Although enthusiasm is a great thing in school-you don't want to find subjects and verbs highlighted in regular books!